The Taps of the Holy Trinity are a new project out of Melbourne, Australia, and their debut full-length, Customs & Rituals of the Taps of the Holy Trinity, drops June 20th via U.K. label Fenny Compton.
The lineup reads like a who’s-who of the Australian underground: Arthur Karanikas of BBQ Haque, Michael Plater (solo artist and member of The Right Hand is Doomed to Blacken and The Northern Lighthouse Board), Dee Hannan of the George Xylouris Ensemble, Dave Bullock from the Paul Kidney Experience and Kiss My Poodle’s Donkey, and drummer Danny Martinov of The Exit Keys. Rounding things out are Italian violinist Massimiliano Gallo and U.K. experimentalist Paul Rodgers on theremin. That is a lot of names, but this isn’t a supergroup vanity project. It sounds more like a group of people who had something very specific they needed to make.
What they needed to make turns out to be something that reaches way back beyond psych rock, beyond folk rock, beyond the whole English-language tradition, into the ancient drone of Greek demotika and the swirling ecstasy of Anatolian folk music. Karanikas and Plater draw on their Mediterranean heritage here, and it’s not window dressing. The instruments alone tell you this is a different kind of record: tzoura, zurna, lauto, djembe, didgeridoo, stylophone, theremin, gongs, organ, and Greek-language lyrics. It’s the sound of a ritual that hasn’t been performed in exactly this configuration before.
The recording method fits the intention perfectly. This was laid down on quarter-inch analog tape and mixed and mastered by Loki Lockwood at Creepy Hollow in Melbourne. Think of the heavier, more hypnotic corners of Dead Can Dance, or Kaleidoscope’s more ethnically adventurous moments, or the way the Master Musicians of Jajouka sound like they’re summoning something rather than just playing a set. There’s also something of the underground psychedelic folk world here: Sunburned Hand of the Man channeling the Greek islands, or a Fushitsusha session that wandered off into a taverna and never came back.
The Greek press has already taken notice. Mike Dimitriou of Loud Cities Radio called it “utterly trippy… an orgy of sounds and performance, outstanding acid folk,” and George Markou of Nowhere Street Music described it as “amazing songs, deep psychedelic and emotional.” The drone is real, the trance is real, and there’s genuine emotional weight underneath the strangeness.
Their 2024 single “Most of Them Were Ghosts” gave a first taste of the project, but the full album context is where this kind of music reveals itself. Side-long immersive folk-psychedelia lives or dies by commitment and atmosphere, and from what Fenny Compton and the band have been previewing, Customs & Rituals has both.
Fans of Dead Can Dance, 3 Mustaphas 3, the Anatolian psych of Erkin Koray and Selda, or the ritualistic drone-folk end of the Drag City catalog should make a beeline for this one. Enjoy!
Keep an eye on the Fenny Compton Bandcamp page here for the record
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